From History and Culture of Peoples of the Middle Volga Region

The article analyzes sources of personal origin – letters of Kazan merchant's wife Matryona Myasnikova to her husband, a well-known bookseller in Russia in the first half of the 19th century, merchant Andrei Gavrilovich Myasnikov. All the letters were written during periods when the merchant was forced to leave home on business. They reflect important events in the life of Kazan: the arrival of Emperor Nicholas I in 1836, the bringing of the Smolensk Icon of the Mother of God (in 1843, 1858). The letters help to clarify some features of the book trade and can also serve as a source for reconstructing women’s everyday life and intra-family relations in the merchant environment of the first half of the 19th century.

The article is devoted to the models of demographic behavior using the example of the nobles of the Kazan province in the second half of the 19th century. The study was conducted on the basis of the Genealogical Dictionary of the Nobles of the Kazan Province and a number of memoirs. Without claiming to be comprehensive, individual cases or groups of cases related to birth rate, marriage and mortality are studied. These characteristics are compared with those of representatives of other classes of the population of Russia as a whole and changes are shown over five decades of the second half of the 19th century. It is concluded that the demographic behavior of representatives of the upper class in this period was characterized by a new type of relationship that developed as a result of the emancipation of women. In connection with this, there were changes in the marriage age of noblewomen, and the first attempts to regulate the birth rate were made. Promising directions for further research are outlined.

The article examines the everyday practices of Tatar families in the sphere of childhood. Traditional aspects of child care, conditioned by the Muslim worldview, are outlined. The author emphasizes that Tatars and outside observers had different views on the organization of child care. Educated Tatars were critical of their own traditions. The article identifies the main domestic assistants in child care: wet nurses, nannies, older children; various strategies for choosing nannies, assessment of their work in ego-documents, age and ethnocultural features are analyzed. In addition, the article includes an episode related to the construction of new terms in pedagogy by Tatar publicists of the early 20th century.

The article analyzes the memoirs of people who survived the siege of Leningrad in 1941–1944. The study is conducted through the prism of Maslow's pyramid, and the identification and structuring of issues raised in the memoirs allow us to consider the transformation of human needs in extreme conditions of wartime. Memoirs help to identify the conditions in which families survived and the responsibility that lay on women, not only working, but also on duty in air defense units, dealing with issues of nutrition, organization of everyday life and daily life in general, sanitary conditions of family members, in creating an environment of mutual support and care. In the course of the analysis of memories, general and specific plots and assessments were revealed concerning intra-family relations, organization of everyday life, provision of food, sanitary living conditions. An analysis of the plots and facts allows us to conclude that the need for relationships and belonging to a family were the basic foundation, without which it was impossible to achieve and solve all the others – food, water, shelter, warmth, security, consisting of stability, health, lack of fear.

The publication provides an analytical review of the article by Abdurrashit Ibragimov (1857–1944), “Nikyakh vә kyzny kiyaүgә birmәk” (“The marriage ceremony and the marriage of the daughter”), devoted to the criticism of negative phenomena in the practices of marriage (nikakh) and the arrangement of family life among Muslim Tatars. Being a prominent Tatar religious and public figure, who knew the life of his fellow tribesmen in all its nuances and subtleties, A. Ibragimov considered it extremely important to find happiness and well-being not only for the Muslim Ummah as a whole, but also for each of its members individually. For this reason, he drew attention to and criticized the ethno-psychological features of marriage, which are contrary to the interests of girls. The appendix contains a commented transliteration of the source from the Old Tatar language.

The review presents the characteristics of the book, which was published in 2024 by a Russian scientist, candidate of sciences E.B. Dolgov. The publication is dedicated to the history of the construction of the governor’s palace of the Kazan Kremlin, the activities of the governors of the Kazan province, as well as the leaders of the Tatar Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic and the Republic of Tatarstan. The review highlights the relevance, great scientific and practical significance of the reviewed work, which covers a period of more than three centuries – from the formation of the Kazan province, when the first governors appeared, until the beginning of the 21th century. The advantages of the book are noted, as well as the problematic field for future scientific research, the starting point for which it should serve.

The article, dedicated to the 200th anniversary of the Tatar scholar and encyclopedist Kayum Nasyri (1825–1902), highlights the contacts between the educator and the Tatar business circles of Kazan. In the second half of the 1850s – 1860s, Nasyri acted as a representative of the Moscow guild merchant, his elder brother Gabdelkhay. In the following decades, in most cases, the educator contacted entrepreneurs as a home tutor of the Russian language and secular subjects for their sons, as well as a translator of documents and a writer of petitions. It was these contacts that provided a stable income, part of which he invested in publishing his works. Only in the 1870s, several entrepreneurs – supporters of the dissemination of socially relevant information among Muslims – became partners with Nasyri as a publisher of his annual calendars. In general, the cooperation of booksellers with Nasyri was local in nature and was based on the conjuncture of the book market. For this reason, K. Nasyri was forced to publish works at his own expense and sell them himself.